Our View: Has school funding inequity finally been confronted in Illinois?

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Posted May. 29, 2014 at 9:55 PM

Posted May. 29, 2014 at 9:55 PM

For many decades now — about as long as we can remember — school funding inequity has been an issue in Illinois, with downstate schools for the most part on the regrettable end of that deal.

And for decades — as long as we can remember — state government has done little to address it, even in the face of real or threatened lawsuits, so much so that we’d resigned ourselves to a just-don’t-make-it-worse acceptance of the status quo in Springfield.

Now that a bill intended to close the gap has passed the Illinois Senate, it might seem to some that the day of reckoning and redistribution has finally arrived. Experience has taught us to be skeptical. Some thoughts:

The Senate Bill 16 championed by Bunker Hill Democrat Andy Manar after a year’s worth of bipartisan study represents a pretty radical departure from past practice, twisting the school aid formula to distribute funds almost entirely — more than 90 percent, compared to less than 50 percent now — on the basis of student need and local district ability to pay. Categorical reimbursement programs — special education, vocational training, student transportation, etc. — previously allocated absent means testing would be folded into the one new formula. Affluent school districts, mostly in Chicago’s suburbs, are the big losers in this bill. All told, about 55 percent of Illinois districts — including Peoria District 150 — come out ahead.

Once upon a time, any school funding reform would contain a hold-harmless provision so that no district would actually lose any money. That, of course, drove the cost way up. Illinois’ budget no longer has that luxury. So the bill caps losses at $1,000 per pupil, which can add up when you start doing the math. Suburban residents pay a lot of income and property taxes, and they’re likely to be none too pleased with sending so much of the former to Springfield without it coming back, or with watching the latter soar. Republicans in general and the suburbs they largely represent are not the political forces that once they were in Illinois, but they’ve not gone away and they won’t take this lying down. The chants of “bring the bottom up, not the top down” have already started, though we were surprised there were a few suburban votes in favor; the bill passed on a 32-19 tally.

Illinois has long been a three-legged stool, politically speaking, divided between Democrat Chicago, its Republican collar counties, and a mixed-bag everywhere else. The relationship between the three often has been more competitive than complementary. To some degree, downstate has been the weak sister in that bargain, needing to partner with another region to pass legislation to its benefit. Where school funding is concerned, downstate has had more in common, if not much more, with the city. But this bill ends the Chicago “block grant,” which has long guaranteed the city’s schools a sizeable state contribution wholly apart from the school aid formula. Chicago stands to lose about $38 million should this bill become law. Though some Chicago legislators voted for it in the Senate, will House Speaker Michael Madigan and Gov. Pat Quinn stand for that? Pragmatically, with this legislative session scheduled to adjourn on Saturday, there just isn’t time for the House to deal with this bill anyway.

Page 2 of 2 - The inequities have been aggravated by two factors: Illinois’ overreliance on the property tax to fund education — with property wealth varying widely between city and suburb and rural — and the state’s lack of support for K-12 education in general. Seventy percent or more of education funding in Illinois comes from local taxes. To compensate for the disparities that produced between property-rich and property-poor school districts, the state created what’s called a “foundation level” — now pegged at $6,119 per student — that was supposed to establish a funding floor to produce an “adequate” education. Schools with large percentages of students from disadvantaged backgrounds got a little extra besides.

Alas, given state budget challenges, appropriations to that foundation level have lagged — to less than 90 percent, at present — which harms poorer school districts that rely on state support the most. The Land of Lincoln has ranked dead last or nearly so nationally in state’s government’s share of classroom funding. That’s the fundamental problem. This bill contains no new money. Meanwhile, it pretty much does away with the foundation level, which may explain why some downstate legislators — including Darin LaHood of Peoria — found it an unacceptable risk.

Ultimately, if District 150 would gain about $8 million initially under the bill, according to preliminary estimates, the Dunlap schools would lose about $2.2 million.

This is a big deal, so it’s surprising how it’s largely flown below the radar. Generally speaking, we’d join those who have concluded that the way Illinois funds its schools is flawed and in need of reform. The quality of a child’s education should not be based on the accident of geography. Is this the remedy?

There’s time to digest it, it’s a provocative debate starter, some of the stances here have defied prediction, and expect this discussion to heat up considerably in an Illinois that could do better, in fairer fashion, by its schoolchildren.